


Friendship in the Bad Lands

by Hexes



Category: Diablo III
Genre: Awkward attempts at friendship, Blood and Gore, Gen, I Wrote This On My Phone, Lovecraftian Gods as character names, Slice of Life, This plotbunny dumped my ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 17:56:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12537832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexes/pseuds/Hexes
Summary: Lyndon attempts to make friends with Olkoth, the Necromancer. He finds it disquieting that that she literally makes friends.Graphic descriptions of gore and blood are graphic. Seriously.Plot is not in attendence here.Un-beta'd.





	Friendship in the Bad Lands

**Author's Note:**

> Eh. So, I never take notes on my plotbunnies, which I should apparently change. Because this plotbunny did a runner, and now I don't remember where I was going with this. At all. So. Whoops. I'm posting it as a slice of life, and perhaps comments will reignite the desire to work on this. Quien sabe~  
> I feel like it needs to be rearranged, perhaps. Hm.

Lyndon had noticed that the Priest of Rathma was distracted. She was sitting at the inn, fiddling with a cup, and looking off into the distance. He decided to investigate.

“You're off your game, Balancer.” He traced a fingertip around the lip of her cup to prove his point. She curled a sardonic smile at him.

She tossed back what was left of the bitter wine, laughing at Lyndon's indelicate attempts at friendship. The red stained her lips for a moment, giving her the disquieting look of having gore on her mouth.

“Youngling,” she purred “I'm a Badlands Legend where I come from.” The metal on her bracers shone like fire through diamond. “And I don't take _kindly_ to your insinuation.”

Lyndon forced himself to laugh. It would appear that he'd gone and stuck his foot in it. “M’lady does seem… well outfitted,” he tried.

“M’lord talks a good game, but lacks a play,” she returned, bringing her carven marble chin to rest on a snow white hand. “Unlike you to rush in without an exit strategy, thief.”

Lyndon sighed. It always came back to his chosen profession.

“A job is as it does, Olkoth.”

She smiled in that way that she did when someone had said something that she didn't entirely agree with. She stroked the Exsanguinated Heart on the table, and it shuddered into a horrifying facsimile of life, beating for her corpsen touch. He just barely contained his shudder of revulsion.

“Indeed, Lyndon.” She stood, stretching as she did. She turned her silver grey gaze at him over her shoulder. “We are what we do.” She stepped into the sunlight, and sang a revolting, beautiful hymn. A nightmarish golem bled into life from the shifting sands. Its misshapen body an enormous, bloody heart, its face a pale, miniscule mask, with eyes like sulphur fire. Lyndon felt his gorge rise. He looked away, thinking frantically of green fields, and running streams, and good _god_ anything other than the malformed beast of blood and bone. He backed away, leaning against the side of the inn, breathing deeply for a moment.

Olkoth crooned to the creature. It grumbled a response, sounding almost like a petulant child responding to its mother. She held a hand up, palm facing the sky, and the golem rested its palm to hers. She smiled.

Their local Crusader came up to the odd duo, barely sparing a glance at the hulking, gruesome mass with whom Olkoth was communing. She dropped her hand, and turned to the other woman. They spoke quietly with one another for a few moments. Disir laid a hand on Olkoth’s shoulder, nodding gravely. She laid her hand over Disir’s, offering a whisper of a smile, and turned away.  

“We must go, Lyndon,” she looked back at him. “Another Priest calls.” She set off, her golem leaving gory footprints in the sand as it ambled after her, its gait upset by the pounding of its heart. Lyndon bit back the nausea that had gripped his stomach. He followed the leader.

 

They met him in the ruins of the Stinging Wastes. He was… less solid than Lyndon was used to seeing the living. He seemed to glow, or be on fire, or some other such Priest of Rathma nonsense. Olkoth recognized him immediately.

“Master Mehtan -” she spoke like the words were the most savoury delicacy she had yet tasted, “well met.”

They embraced, and he rested his hand on the back of her neck like any other priest would. They rested their foreheads together, eyes closed, as they hummed a dirge. Lyndon felt distinctly that he was intruding upon something exceedingly intimate. He turned to the golem, which he had only sort of managed to find not thoroughly nausea-inducing.

“So!” The creature looked at him, “Where did you come from? Is this like… a spare parts assembly, or more like… you're just born this way?”

The golem gurgled thoughtfully.

“It is the amalgam of life, death, and willpower.” Olkoth responded. “But now we must do battle,” Lyndon turned just in time to see her smash open a soul prison.

The spirits wailed furiously.

But they were also hopelessly outmatched by two Necromancers, an Archer, and a huge - surprisingly deft - mass of life, death and will power. The spirits were dispatched with relative ease. Saying goodbyes, however, was interrupted by the Cultists’ appearance.

The enforcer demon they had brought with them was obscenely large - it matched the golem for height, and despite the exploding corpses, and enchanted bolts, seemed to be completely unperturbed by their attack. Olkoth’s eyes blazed like white hot metal as she took direct control of the golem. Leading it to melee with the enforcer, she shrieked, and the golem exploded in a shower gore, entrails wrapping themselves around the enforcer’s throat, slowly wringing the life from it.

Lyndon failed to contain his dismay. Clutching one hand to his crossbow, the other took hold of the nearest solid object, and he proceeded to vomit enthusiastically onto the sandy stairs. Said solid object was Olkoth. She shushed him, holding his hair back. The soothing sursaturation gradually faded into the horrifying hymn from the hidden camp, and the golem reassembled itself from the hideous mess of viscera strewn about them. Lyndon tried to avoid retching again. He glanced up at the Priest, only to find her looking rather more worn than he had ever seen her before. His attempt to inquire was cut short by her whispering to the phylactery in her hand ' _take me home_ ' just before she stepped sideways through the portal. Heaving a long suffering sigh, Lyndon followed.

 

Disir was waiting for them. She motioned dismissively at the golem who grumbled irritably. They stood for a moment, staring at one another standoffishly. Olkoth sighed. She nodded to the golem, and then to the Crusader, and Lyndon was quite convinced that, had it been able, the golem would have stuck its tongue out at Disir. Disir narrowed her eyes in response - looking unbearably, childishly smug - and instead hustled Olkoth off to Haedrig’s.

“You should let me plait your hair, Priest Olkoth.” Disir was leveling a penetrating look at the necromancer. She began to unbuckle her gauntlets, watching the other woman closely. Kormac appeared as though brought by a gust of wind to offer his assistance.

The two of them turned to one another, and began to unbuckle, unlace, lift, slip… it was smooth, and quiet. Meditative. Then, when both zealots were down to breeches and roughspun, Disir turned back to Olkoth, looking expectant. Olkoth, who was staring off into the distance, looking contemplative. Disir huffed, and pulled the Priest toward herself, repeating the same prayerful dismantling of armour. Kormac looked at Lyndon expectantly. Lyndon shrugged, stripped his meager armour, dropped it in a pile, and set his bow to the forge with infinitely more care.

Disir pulled Olkoth to the inn, sparing a glare for the golem to ensure that it stayed outside, before she set about getting the Priest situated.

 

 --------------

 

Olkoth was becoming ludicrously powerful. Brilliance aside, it was scary, frankly. She had just exploded with dark energy, blasting demons into those oddly shaped corpses she did, right before she made _those_ explode. It was all unnecessarily bloody, Lyndon decided, peevishly plucking a piece of demon entrail from his coat. _Unsanitary_ , really.

“This really is rather… messy, Olkoth.”

She laughed. It was a sound he hadn't heard before, and he couldn't decide if it was beautiful or beastly. It became her, in either case.

“Indeed, young one,” she smiled, picking another bit of creature from him. “indeed…”

“How old are you anyway?” he asked, redirecting some of his frustration. Her proximity was somewhat unnerving.

She turned a surprised and curious gaze on him. Tilting her head to the side, she considered him intently, as if trying to deduce whether or not the question was a jest. It was not.

“Why,” she breathed, her voice velvety, “I am as old as Death.” She tilted her head back the other direction. “We of Rathma do not simply serve the Cycle - we are the Cycle.” A serene expression settled onto her face. It was almost blissful. “Death was there when the first thing became, and so Death will remain here, until the last living thing dies,” her eyes slid shut, utterly at ease with the notion of dying. “And so shall we serve, until we are no longer necessary.”


End file.
